Yesterday marked 23 years since the September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, in which four co-ordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda against the US.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the east coast to California.
The hijackers crashed the first two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and aimed the next two flights toward targets in or near Washington, DC, in an attack on the US capital. The third team succeeded in striking the Pentagon, the headquarters of the US Department of Defence, in Arlington County, Virginia, and the fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania during a passenger revolt.
My knowledge of the attacks came about at approximately 9.50 am on September 11, 2001, when I received a call from a former BWIA colleague, who told me "a light aircraft" had just flown into one of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers and the event was being carried live on CNN.
I immediately went to the TTCAA’s aeronautical information services (AIS) department, where I viewed the coverage.
I saw the silhouette of a large aircraft flying into the other WTC tower. On seeing this, I immediately turned to the AIS duty supervisor and said to him: "This seems to be a lot more serious than what meets the eye."
I instructed him to issue a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) with immediate effect declaring Port of Spain, Point Lisas, Pointe-a-Pierre, Point Fortin and Galeota "no-fly zones." Chaguaramas, being a military area, was already a no-fly zone.
As details of the events unfolded, it became known that ringleader Mohamed Atta flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the WTC complex at 8.46 am.
Seventeen minutes later, at 9.03 am the WTC South Tower was hit by United Airlines Flight 17.
Both 110-storey skyscrapers of the WTC collapsed within an hour and 41 minutes, bringing about the destruction of the remaining five structures in the WTC complex and destroying nearby buildings. American Airlines Flight 77 flew towards Washington, DC, and crashed into the Pentagon at 9.37 am, causing a partial collapse.
The fourth and final flight, United Airlines Flight 93, also changed course towards Washington. Investigators believe the flight was intended to target either the US Capitol or the White House.
Alerted to the previous attacks, the passengers revolted against the hijackers, who then crashed the aircraft into a Stonycreek Township field, near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10.03 am.
The September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in history.
In response, the US waged a multi-decade global war on terror to eliminate hostile groups deemed terrorist organisations, as well as the foreign governments purported to support them, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and several other countries.
The 19 al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists who hijacked four commercial jetliners exploited weaknesses in airport security systems.
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